Dusk was already settling purple and freezing over the roofs of Harth when Jon, Lady Signe Lorr, and notary Corve Penner ducked through the shored masonry breach of Cellar Twenty and stepped out onto the timber platform spanning Low Sike.
Inside the recessed stone chamber at the base of Old Hill, Alden Bram and Garrick Holt had used the twenty minutes of Jon’s absence well. Holt had packed the bronze gland-nut of the intake spindle with fresh tallow and graphite so the stem would turn without seizing, and with a narrow cold-chisel Bram had cut six shallow V-notches around the outer circumference of the cast-iron wheel rim to seat the wire turns so they could not slip sideways under load.
“You’ve got the spool, Jon!” Bram called out, backing his shoulders out of the hot two-foot breach and wiping the sweat from his spectacles with his kerchief. “Good—give me the bitter end and let’s get the first figure-eight around the boss before the steam pressure climbs another pound.”
“Wait sixty seconds, Master Bram,” Lady Signe said, stepping onto the heavy ash cradle right in front of the breached intake wall and unrolling the thick vellum scroll of the Bound Common Charter across the flat top of the three-hundred-pound granite block they had pulled from the arch. “Hold your lantern over the dorsal margin of the parchment, Corve.”
